Whine Not Take a Gramm of Truth?

In "disowning political supporters" news, the latest casualty is Phil Gramm, who was given his walking papers by John McCain because he (Gramm) described the United States as "a nation of whiners". And of course the PC response to this is to recite an endless laundry list of "real problems", like the declining dollar, the limp stock market, the subprime mortgage crisis, retirement fund meltdowns, the Social Security time bomb, Medicare, unemployment or under-employment owing to offshoring of industry and "free trade".... etc. etc. Of course, the fact that the vast bulk of these problems was caused by government meddling in the economy is less often mentioned. So yes, there are "real problems", from whatever cause. But, at the same time, it is demonstrably true that we have become a nation of whiners, crybabies, thumbsuckers, and spoiled brats -- and this is not an economic phenomenon, it's a "mental" one, as Gramm pointed out. It's the same old story of rising expectations -- when things improve, expectations as to how things _ought_ to be go up as well, usually at a rate about twice that of actual improvements. Now, the best predictor of happiness is not actual level of prosperity or "quality of life" on an absolute scale, but the relationship of outcomes to expectations. Paradoxically, in times of actual improvements in quality of life expectations rise as well, and outpace the improvements. So what happens? Net "happiness", i.e. the ratio of improvement over expectations, goes down! So yes, in many respects overall improvements result in more _subjective_ (vs. actual) misery. History tends to support this idea. For example, many of the more prominent revolutions over the past centuries have followed an _improvement_ in conditions, the French and Russian revolutions being examples. In our own country, the race riots of the late 60s _followed_ the Civil Rights Act, rather than preceding it. And now we have another example, and I can trace it to the fact that my generation, i.e. the postwar or "baby boom" generation, came of age in what is arguably the peak of American prosperity and social/political dominance on the world scene. So we inherited, and perfected, the postwar concepts of endless prosperity, endless "growth", and endless dominance of America, and of the "American way". We may, in addition, have passed some of these ideas on to our kids. But now we have a situation where all sorts of chickens (economic, social, political) are coming home to roost. America's dominance of the world economic scene has been badly eroded of late, with no end in sight. We are politically part of a minority of two -- us and Israel. Socially, we are seen as "the" problem by the entire Moslem world. And our Achilles heel -- dependence on the oil which is dispensed by medieval sheiks in burnooses -- is causing us more pain each day. So yes, America is being put in its place, at long last... we are suffering "setbacks"... we are finally on the receiving end of more equitable world-wide market forces, now that our dominance is declining. But what do the folks on the home front want? Why, they want the America they and their parents grew up in, when we were "large and in charge". But that ship has sailed. Hence, the whining -- and hence the coverup by McCain and Obama. Their model is similar to that of social workers -- nothing is ever anyone's "fault", it's just a matter of environment -- of circumstances beyond anyone's control. Well, it's true enough that governmental incompetence is beyond most people's control, and that's what's behind most of the problems in question. But having admitted that, it's also true that Americans are having a collective tantrum, anxiety attack, and emotional meltdown, and neither McCain nor Obama has anything in their political medicine chest to treat it.